All Entries Tagged With: "New Media"

Old law applied to new media could spell trouble for terrestrial radio

NEW YORK — As media technology advances, our legal system tends to lag behind. Old rules governing new situations as interpreted by judges who aren’t exactly on the leading edge of these advances, is often a recipe for disaster. To apply existing rules to the internet requires a liberal (as in “not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas”) interpretation. This same interpretation as it could then be applied to terrestrial radio could prove problematic.

In New York, defamation suits revolve around what the average person reading or hearing a communication would take an alleged “false statement of fact” to mean.

The average person, at the time this law was drafted, was probably a very active terrestrial media consumer. However, now with the courts being inundated with internet based communications matters, the average person who is consuming internet media is becoming the standard in which all rules apply.

Afterthoughts on using and protecting intellectual property

By Matthew B. Harrison, esq.
PhotosAndTheLaw.com

Last month, this column detailed the four factors of the fair use defense to copyright infringement. The prior column addressed how to use the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in order to protect your audio (and video) from misuse. Both of these articles generated enough reader feedback and follow up questions, that it seemed like a good idea to provide a summary article with some additional clarifications.

The first two, and the most straightforward, of four factors of a fair use defense to copyright infringement are:

· The nature of the copyrighted work; and
· The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;

and the two that led to the most follow up are:

· The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; and
· The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.